Titolo ALEXITHYMIA BURDEN AND EMOTIONAL STATE IN ALS’ CAREGIVERS

titolo: alexithymia, burden and emotional state in als’ caregivers autori: stefania la foresta1, cristina faraone1 , sabrina piera villari2

Titolo: ALEXITHYMIA, BURDEN AND EMOTIONAL STATE IN ALS’ CAREGIVERS
Autori: Stefania La Foresta1, Cristina Faraone1 , Sabrina Piera
Villari2 , Massimo Russo1, Giuseppe Vita 1,3, Christian Lunetta1,
Sonia Messina1,3 , Maria Stella Epifanio2
1NEuroMuscular Omnicentre (NEMO), Fondazione Aurora Onlus, Messina
2Department of Psychological, Pedagogical and Educational Sciences,
University of Palermo
3Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of
Messina
Introduction: Living with a progressively disease such as Amyotrophic
lateral sclerosis (ALS) has a strong impact on the people affected and
on their relatives, who have to tackle the demanding duties of caring
for and assisting them (Tramonti et al., 2014). Although an extensive
literature documents the levels of distress among caregivers of
patients with progressive illness, less attention has been directed to
determinants of caregiver mood and emotional regulation (Rabkin et
al., 2009). In particular, there are not studies that assess the role
of alexithymia in ALS. We evaluated the relationship between
alexithymia and burden, and psychopatological symptoms in
ALS’caregivers.
Methods: 17 ALS’caregivers were tested with the following instruments:
Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS20); Hospital Anxiety and Depression
Scale (HADS); Caregiver Burden Inventory (CBI).
Results: 9 (53%) caregivers suffered from alexithymia (M=58; SD=6.2),
while 8 individuals (47%) were not alexithymic (M=41.25; SD=8.31). We
showed a positive correlation between total alexithymia score
(TAS20-Tot) and depression (HADS-D; ρ= 0.575, p<0.01) and emotional
burden (CBI-E; ρ=0.581, p<0.01). We found positive associations
between TAS20 Difficulty Identifying Feelings subscale (TAS20-DIF) and
anxiety (HADS-A; ρ=0.505, p<0.05), and HADS-D (ρ=0.679, p<0.05), and
CBI-E (ρ=0.672, p<0.01). TAS20 Difficulty Describing Feelings subscale
(TAS20-DDF) correlated with HADS-D (ρ=0.508, p<0.05) and CBI-E (ρ=0.747,
p<0.01). TAS20 Externally-Oriented Thinking subscale (TAS20-EOT) did
not show any significant correlation.
Conclusions: Our results in ALS’ caregivers confirm previous evidence
of a relationship between alexithymia and depression symptoms in other
severe disabling diseases. Difficulty in identifying and describing
own and others feelings could increase caregivers’emotional negative
state and burden. It could lead to ineffective emotional responding
and it could be a risk factor for care-related stress.